Do you have a chronic degenerative disease? If so, have you
been told, "It's all in your head?"
Well, that might not be that far from the truth… the root
cause of your illness may be in your mouth.
There is a common dental procedure that nearly every dentist
will tell you is completely safe, despite the fact that
scientists have been warning of its dangers for more than 100
years.
Every day in the United States alone, 41,000 of these dental
procedures are performed on patients who believe they are safely
and permanently fixing their problem.
What is this dental procedure?
The root canal.
More than 25 million root canals are performed every year in
this country.
Root-canaled teeth are essentially "dead" teeth that can
become silent incubators for highly toxic anaerobic bacteria
that can, under certain conditions, make their way into your
bloodstream to cause a number of serious medical conditions—many
not appearing until decades later.
Most of these toxic teeth feel and look fine for many years,
which make their role in systemic disease even harder to trace
back.
Sadly, the vast majority of dentists are oblivious to the
serious potential health risks they are exposing their patients
to, risks that persist for the rest of their patients' lives.
The American Dental Association claims root canals have been
proven safe, but they have NO published data or actual research
to substantiate this claim.
Fortunately, I had some early mentors like Dr. Tom Stone and
Dr. Douglas Cook, who educated me on this issue nearly 20 years
ago. Were it not for a brilliant pioneering dentist who, more
than a century ago, made the connection between root-canaled
teeth and disease, this underlying cause of disease may have
remained hidden to this day. The dentist's name was Weston
Price—regarded by many as the greatest dentist of all time.
Weston A. Price: World's Greatest Dentist
Most dentists would be doing an enormous service to public
health if they familiarized themselves with the work of Dr.
Weston Pricei.
Unfortunately, his work continues to be discounted and
suppressed by medical and dental professionals alike.
Dr. Price was a dentist and researcher who traveled the world
to study the teeth, bones, and diets of native populations
living without the "benefit" of modern food. Around the year
1900, Price had been treating persistent root canal infections
and became suspicious that root-canaled teeth always remained
infected, in spite of treatments. Then one day, he recommended
to a woman, wheelchair bound for six years, to have her root
canal tooth extracted, even though it appeared to be fine.
She agreed, so he extracted her tooth and then implanted it
under the skin of a rabbit. The rabbit amazingly developed the
same crippling arthritis as the woman and died from the
infection 10 days later. But the woman, now free of the toxic
tooth, immediately recovered from her arthritis and could now
walk without even the assistance of a cane.
Price discovered that it's mechanically impossible to
sterilize a root-canaled (e.g. root-filled) tooth.
He then went on to show that many chronic degenerative
diseases originate from root-filled teeth—the most frequent
being heart and circulatory diseases. He actually found 16
different causative bacterial agents for these conditions. But
there were also strong correlations between root-filled teeth
and diseases of the joints, brain and nervous system. Dr. Price
went on to write two groundbreaking books in 1922 detailing his
research into the link between dental pathology and chronic
illness. Unfortunately, his work was deliberately buried for 70
years, until finally one endodontist named George Meinig
recognized the importance of Price's work and sought to expose
the truth.
Dr. Meinig Advances the Work of Dr. Price
Dr. Meinig, a native of Chicago, was a captain in the U.S.
Army during World War II before moving to Hollywood to become a
dentist for the stars. He eventually became one of the founding
members of the American Association of Endodontists (root canal
specialists).
In the 1990s, he spent 18 months immersed in Dr. Price's
research. In June of 1993, Dr. Meinig published the book
Root Canal Cover-Up, which continues to be the most
comprehensive reference on this topic today. You can order your
copy directly from the
Price-Pottenger Foundationii.
What Dentists Don't Know About the Anatomy of Your Teeth
Your teeth are made of the hardest substances in your body.
In the middle of each tooth is the pulp chamber, a soft
living inner structure that houses blood vessels and nerves.
Surrounding the pulp chamber is the dentin, which is made of
living cells that secrete a hard mineral substance. The
outermost and hardest layer of your tooth is the white enamel,
which encases the dentin.
The roots of each tooth descend into your jawbone and are
held in place by the periodontal ligament. In dental school,
dentists are taught that each tooth has one to four major
canals. However, there are accessory canals that are never
mentioned. Literally miles of them!
Just as your body has large blood vessels that branch down
into very small capillaries, each of your teeth has a maze of
very tiny tubules that, if stretched out, would extend for three
miles. Weston Price identified as many as 75 separate accessory
canals in a single central incisor (front tooth). For a more
detailed explanation, refer to an article by Hal Huggins, DDS,
MS, on the Weston A. Price Foundation website.iii
(These images are borrowed from the Huggins article.)
Microscopic organisms regularly move in and around these
tubules, like gophers in underground tunnels.
When a dentist performs a root canal, he or she hollows out
the tooth, then fills the hollow chamber with a substance
(called guttapercha), which cuts off the tooth from its blood
supply, so fluid can no longer circulate through the tooth. But
the maze of tiny tubules remains. And bacteria, cut off from
their food supply, hide out in these tunnels where they are
remarkably safe from antibiotics and your own body's immune
defenses.
The Root Cause of Much Disease
Under the stresses of oxygen and nutrient deprivation, these
formerly friendly organisms morph into stronger, more virulent
anaerobes that produce a variety of potent toxins. What were
once ordinary, friendly oral bacteria mutate into highly toxic
pathogens lurking in the tubules of the dead tooth, just
awaiting an opportunity to spread.
No amount of sterilization has been found effective in
reaching these tubules—and just about every single root-canaled
tooth has been found colonized by these bacteria, especially
around the apex and in the periodontal ligament. Oftentimes, the
infection extends down into the jawbone where it creates
cavitations—areas of necrotic tissue in the jawbone itself.
Cavitations are areas of unhealed bone, often accompanied by
pockets of infected tissue and gangrene. Sometimes they form
after a tooth extraction (such as a wisdom tooth extraction),
but they can also follow a root canal. According to Weston Price
Foundation, in the records of 5,000 surgical cavitation
cleanings, only two were found healed.
And all of this occurs with few, if any, accompanying
symptoms. So you may have an abscessed dead tooth and not know
it. This focal infection in the immediate area of the
root-canaled tooth is bad enough, but the damage doesn't stop
there.
Root Canals Can Lead to Heart, Kidney, Bone, and Brain Disease
As long as your immune system remains strong, any bacteria
that stray away from the infected tooth are captured and
destroyed. But once your immune system is weakened by something
like an accident or illness or other trauma, your immune system
may be unable to keep the infection in check.
These bacteria can migrate out into surrounding tissues by
hitching a ride into your blood stream, where they are
transported to new locations to set up camp. The new location
can be any organ or gland or tissue.
Dr. Price was able to transfer diseases harbored by humans to
rabbits, by implanting fragments of root-canaled teeth, as
mentioned above. He found that root canal fragments from a
person who had suffered a heart attack, when implanted into a
rabbit, would cause a heart attack in the rabbit within a few
weeks.
He discovered he could transfer heart disease to the rabbit
100 percent of the time! Other diseases were more than 80
percent transferable by this method. Nearly every chronic
degenerative disease has been linked with root canals,
including:
- Heart disease
- Kidney disease
- Arthritis, joint, and rheumatic diseases
- Neurological diseases (including ALS and MS)
- Autoimmune diseases (Lupus and more)
There may also be a cancer connection. Dr. Robert Jones, a
researcher of therelationship between root canals and breast
cancer, found an extremely high correlation between root canals
and breast cancer.iv
He claims to have found the following correlations in a
five-year study of 300 breast cancer cases:
- 93 percent of women with breast cancer had root canals
- 7 percent had other oral pathology
- Tumors, in the majority of cases, occurred on the same
side of the body as the root canal(s) or other oral
pathology
Dr. Jones claims that toxins from the bacteria in an infected
tooth or jawbone are able to inhibit the proteins that suppress
tumor development. A German physician reported similar findings.
Dr. Josef Issels reported that, in his 40 years of treating
"terminal" cancer patients, 97 percent of his cancer patients
had root canals. If these physicians are correct, the cure for
cancer may be as simple as having a tooth pulled, then
rebuilding your immune system.
Good Bugs Gone Bad
How are these mutant oral bacteria connected with heart
disease or arthritis? The ADA and the AAE claim it's a "myth"
that the bacteria found in and around root-canaled teeth can
cause diseasev.
But they base that on the misguided assumption that the bacteria
in these diseased teeth are the SAME as normal bacteria in your
mouth—and that's clearly not the case.
Today, bacteria can be identified using DNA analysis, whether
they're dead or alive, from their telltale DNA signatures.
In a continuation of Dr. Price's work, the Toxic Element
Research Foundation (TERF) used DNA analysis to examine
root-canaled teeth, and they found bacterial contamination in
100 percent of the samples tested. They identified 42
different species of anaerobic bacteria in 43 root canal
samples. In cavitations, 67 different bacteria were identified
among the 85 samples tested, with individual samples housing
between 19 to 53 types of bacteria each. The bacteria they found
included the following types:
- Capnocytophagaochraceavi
- Fusobacteriumnucleatumvii
- Gemellamorbillorum
viii
- Leptotrichiabuccalis
- Porphyromonasgingivalis
ix
Are these just benign, ordinary mouth bugs? Absolutely not.
Four can affect your heart, three can affect your nerves, two
can affect your kidneys, two can affect your brain, and one can
infect your sinus cavities… so they are anything BUT friendly!
(If you want see just how unfriendly they can be, I invite you
to investigate the footnotes.)
Approximately 400 percent more bacteria were found in the
blood surrounding the root canal tooth than were found
in the tooth itself, suggesting the tooth is the incubatorand
the periodontal ligament is the food supply. The bone
surrounding root-canaled teeth was found even HIGHER in
bacterial count… not surprising, since bone is virtual buffet of
bacterial nutrients.
Since When is Leaving A Dead Body Part IN Your Body a Good Idea?
There is no other medical procedure that involves allowing a
dead body part to remain in your body. When your appendix dies,
it's removed. If you get frostbite or gangrene on a finger or
toe, it is amputated. If a baby dies in utero, the body
typically initiates a miscarriage.
Your immune system doesn't care for dead substances, and just
the presence of dead tissue can cause your system to launch an
attack, which is another reason to avoid root canals—they leave
behind a dead tooth.
Infection, plus the autoimmune rejection reaction, causes
more bacteria to collect around the dead tissue. In the case of
a root canal, bacteria are given the opportunity to flush into
your blood stream every time you bite down.
Why Dentists Cling to the Belief Root Canals are Safe
The ADA rejects Dr. Price's evidence, claiming root canals
are safe, yet they offer no published data or actual research to
substantiate their claim. American Heart Association recommends
a dose of antibiotics before many routine dental procedures to
prevent infective endocarditis (IE) if you have certain heart
conditions that predispose you to this type of infection.
So, on the one hand, the ADA acknowledges oral bacteria can
make their way from your mouth to your heart and cause a
life-threatening infection.
But at the same time, the industry vehemently denies any
possibility that these same bacteria—toxic strains KNOWN to be
pathogenic to humans—can hide out in your dead root-canaled
tooth to be released into your blood stream every time you chew,
where they can damage your health in a multitude of ways.
Is this really that large of a leap? Could there be another
reason so many dentists, as well as the ADA and the AAE, refuse
to admit root canals are dangerous? Well, yes, as a matter of
fact, there is. Root canals are the most profitable procedure in
dentistry.x
What You Need to Know to AVOID a Root Canal
I strongly recommend never getting a root canal. Risking your
health to preserve a tooth simply doesn't make sense.
Unfortunately, there are many people who've already have one. If
you have, you should seriously consider having the tooth
removed, even if it looks and feels fine. Remember, as soon as
your immune system is compromised, your risk of of developing a
serious medical problem increases—and assaults on your immune
system are far too frequent in today's world.
If you have a tooth removed, there are a few options
available to you.
- Partial denture: This is a removable denture, often just
called a "partial." It's the simplest and least expensive
option.
- Bridge: This is a more permanent fixture resembling a
real tooth but is a bit more involved and expensive to
build.
- Implant: This is a permanent artificial tooth, typically
titanium, implanted in your gums and jaw. There are some
problems with these due to reactions to the metals used.
Zirconium is a newer implant material that shows promise for
fewer complications.
But just pulling the tooth and inserting some sort of
artificial replacement isn't enough.
Dentists are taught to remove the tooth but leave your
periodontal ligament. But as you now know, this ligament can
serve as a breeding ground for deadly bacteria. Most experts
who've studied this recommend removing the ligament, along with
one millimeter of the bony socket, in order to drastically
reduce your risk of developing an infection from the bacterially
infected tissues left behind.
I strongly recommend consulting a biological dentist because
they are uniquely trained to do these extractions properly and
safely, as well as being adept at removing
mercury fillings, if necessary. Their approach to dental
care is far more holistic and considers the impact on your
entire body—not JUST your mouth.
If you need to find a biological dentist in your area, I
recommend visiting
toxicteeth.orgxi,
a resource sponsored by Consumers for Dental Choice. This
organization, championed by Charlie Brown, is a highly reputable
organization that has fought to protect and educate consumers so
that they can make better-informed decisions about their dental
care. The organization also heads up the Campaign for
Mercury-Free Dentistry.
References:
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